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Geez, when I was a kid, most of us just hacked the block of wood into some kind of angle and tried to get the weight right! Mine are from '79-'80 or so.

You'll notice that #8 has decals from a '50s model kit. My dad contributed to that one more, and our scale was off, which is why he drilled all the exhaust ports in it. We had to tape weights all over it at the race. It was awful, and didn't win anything.

I did the purple one pretty much on my own. It was lopsided, and I brush painted it with airplane dope. I can still remember how strong the fumes were. Managed to pull out a fourth place with that ugly thing.

I don't know if my son is going to do Scouts or not, but these pictures do seem like fun!

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I don't know if anyone else mentioned this, but I will just in case they didn't. You can true the wheels by inserting a 2" long machine screw that will just fit through the wheel with a nut gently tightened on the backside (hub) then inserting the the machine screw into a drill so the wheel can be spun against sandpaper held on a flat surface. It will make the wheel perfectly round.

Another trick is filing down the little ridges you'll find on the underside of the nail heads (axles). Doesn't take much. I used a points file.

Man, I need to have another baby boy so I can do this stuff again!

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Put the nail in a drill and polish it with a file and emery paper. Do they still use nails, the last one I built with my boys was in 73.

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Wife and I had a great day of racing at my son, Colton's, annual Cub Scout Pinewood Derby race recently! The very best part was building the cars together and watching the kids have a blast sanding and painting their own cars prior to the big race day! Total fun for all of us! The Boy Scouts even let siblings participate, so my daughter Courtney was thrilled, too! Now, I just have to get one of those aluminum tracks for our basement so we can have fun with it all year! )

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So......We run to the scale this AM......Logan and I are .5 oz over weight.....with only 1 blower. Good thing is we do fit in the box. Time to get the die Grinder and groove the bottom.....This will be fun. Logan gets jumpy when he uses air tools.

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So......We run to the scale this AM......Logan and I are .5 oz over weight.....with only 1 blower. Good thing is we do fit in the box. Time to get the die Grinder and groove the bottom.....This will be fun. Logan gets jumpy when he uses air tools.

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You can glue a small piece of astro turf to the car, and drop BB's into the astro turf until you hit the 5.0 ounce mark. You can get your car to the EXACT max legal weight this way. That said, it's ugly.

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Won this trophy for getting second place with a car built the year before the orange one. It was black with red striping and numbers, similar shape but a boat shaped front end....its around in a box somewhere. Im thinking around 1976.

The following year we (i use the term we loosely, Dad did all the work(hes a body man)...LOL) built this laquer orange with gold pearl and my dad had the local pinstriper stripe it and do the lettering. My dad did the mural on the back with an airbrush. It was slow as Chrismas, but won best looking....couldnt find that trophy, may still be at my parents house stashed away.

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Here are some more progress Pics.....We found out that we were over weight by half an ounce, so we brought it home and gutted the bottom....went back and were still .1 over. Looks like well have to gut it some more....without losing style.

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Logan got to run the Die Grinder and throw some dust as we hollowed out the bottom. We ended up cutting some coves in the side, almost corvette like. We had to stray from the original 2-Much design a bit, but we had weight and something had to go!

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Gutted it out more even more & had logan sand it down with 300 and 600 to take off most of the Primer's weight. We got a Plastic Driver rather than the Lead Version......We'll Hit the Scale again tomorrow.

Im gonna have a Co Pilot for sure this summer.....He'll be learning lots of real great stuff from my Rod Knock buddies......

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We had a blast doing the Pinewood Derby with our pack. We have a scale at work that weighs down to the gram. Our cars weighed 4.99oz. I'll have to get it to 5.00 next year. My sons finished 2nd in his pack and mine got 3rd for the parents.

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The trip to Hobby Lobby last night put the car way over budget! Its been years since I bought Testors paint. The 2nd blower was 6.99....I guess Speed really does Cost. Im sure that some snap together models will be next.